PRINCIPAL ENTRANCE.]

The people of Havre have two points of comparison that more particularly
concern themselves: Their Maritime Exhibition of 1868, which, as far as
exhibition goes, was a complete success, is the first. The financial
results of it were not brilliant, but that was due to certain reasons upon
which it is not necessary to dwell. On the contrary, the Rouen Exhibition
of 1884 proved profitable.

The Havre Exhibition, under able management, can have only a like good
fortune. It must be said that the people of Havre would be deeply
humiliated should it prove otherwise.

A very appropriate location was selected for the Exhibition, in the busiest
quarter of the center of the city. Its circumference embraces one of the
finest docks of the port--the Commerce Dock, thus named because it could
not be finished (in 1827) except by the financial co-operation of the
shipowners and merchants of the city. For the purposes of the Exhibition,
this dock is now temporarily closed to navigation.

In the various structures, wood has been exclusively employed. The main
building, which alone has a monumental character, is Arabic in style, and
is situated in the center of Gambetta Place, over Paris Street, which here
becomes a tunnel. Two facades overlook the ends of this tunnel. A third
facade, which is much longer, fronts Commerce Dock.

The edifice is surmounted by a spherical cupola that serves as a base to a
semaphore provided with masts and rigging. On each side of the sphere there
are two pendent beacons. Wide glazed bays open in the external facades, and
allow the eye to wander to the south through Paris Street as far as to the